How to lose your stuff

I haven't seen that video of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dancing her ass off, and nor will I, but kudos to Wired for using it as a peg on which to hang a good story about copyright, mash-ups, fair use and the like.

The story is worth reading for its own sake, but what struck me was what happened to Sarah Newhouse, the woman who created the mash-up that the video of Ocasio-Cortez (and many other videos) was copying.

Meanwhile, Newhouse, who created the original Breakfast Club/Phoenix mashup, says her entire YouTube account has since been deleted—for copyright infringement. “It was a three strikes rule, I got three copyright claims and poof!”1

She's still around, on Twitter and on YouTube, where she just reposted the original mash-up "from the og". Does that really mean that she didn't have the original any more? Doesn't bear thinking about.

I believe that to be fully up-to-date I am supposed to insert citation details somewhere in the blockquote, but I haven't yet worked out how. ↩